


in fact, i lied (because i want you)

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, phil is just trying to do his Best and dan keeps judging him, thats basically the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 14:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10115282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: dan howell and all the different Feelings he has had for phil





	

There was definitely a point where Dan would have said that he didn’t like Phil. Not only that, but Dan would have surely also said that he was a little bit scared of Phil. Because, well, Phil really was a bit scary, or at least a bit intimidating. He still thinks that, honestly, even if he thinks it in a very different way now.

Phil’s older than Dan - not by a lot, but older nonetheless. And he’s the effortless kind of cool. He looks good every single day, and Dan might be a little bit biased, but still, objectively, Phil always looks _really good_. Everything he wears somehow looks good, and Dan’s definitely more than a bit jealous of how good his hair always looks.

One of the most intimidating parts of Phil, honestly, is his group of friends. They’re the kind of people who never look like they’re having any fun at all. They sit together in the back of the cafeteria, and everybody knows they have fun with each other, because they always look they’re having a blast on their Snapchat stories, but they never have fun with anyone else. And it’s _so_ intimidating. They never laugh at other people’s jokes, they always look bored during school events, and they never even smile at other people! How could Dan be expected to like someone who doesn’t even smile at his classmates?

So, yeah, Dan didn’t like Phil. Dan had friends and a fairly decent social life and so he didn’t really need to waste his time on a boy who was too good for everyone else.

But then they had class together, and Phil gave a speech about endangered animals, so clearly he _did_ have a heart. Dan still didn’t like Phil, but he had to give him some credit for being a decent human being. Plus, his voice? Well, it was actually a really nice voice, and Dan couldn’t help but notice that (in a completely platonic way, of course.) Dan found himself thinking about Phil an awful lot, if he was being completely honest with himself, but it didn’t mean anything. Sometimes you just happen to constantly think about people you don’t like. That’s all. It wasn’t a big deal.

Clearly it was a big deal, though, because Dan eventually found himself taking the time to spend hours stalking Phil’s tumblr. Phil and him didn’t follow each other, but Dan (through some more stalking) had found a friend from school who followed them both and had tagged Phil in a post once. So, naturally, he spent hours going through all of Phil’s posts (and also his face tag. Just, y’know, to double check that it was the right person’s blog. That’s the only reason, really.) Phil mainly posted about bands and shows that Dan had never watched before, which was fine, really. It didn’t really matter that they didn’t have a lot in common, because they weren’t friends so who cared, honestly.

(Except, well. Maybe they did have some interests in common. Because either Phil was really bad at stalking or he just had no shame, but one day Dan opened tumblr and found that Phil’s blog had liked one of his old posts.)

So, Dan wasn’t an idiot, okay? He’d had crushes before. When he started thinking about how nice Phil looked, or wondering what it would be like to spend some more time with Phil, he did consider the idea that he’d somehow developed a crush on Phil. But then a few more weeks went by, and Phil continued to be aloof and mysterious, and Dan decided that no, he wasn’t into Phil. Phil was an interesting and mildly hot person, yes, but he wasn’t Dan’s type.

And it continued, and Dan and Phil worked together in class but they didn’t hang out outside of it. Some days Dan was sick of Phil and his friends acting like they were too good for anyone else, and some days he desperately wished that he was one of Phil’s friends. Some days he didn’t even think of Phil at all, and some days he desperately fantasized about ways in which he might accidentally end up with Phil’s number. At one point he definitely crossed the line over from not liking Phil, but it happened so slowly and yet also so suddenly that he would never be able to identify the moment when it happened.

Dan didn’t hate Phil anymore, in fact he found himself thinking that he’d quite like to be friends with him. Not everything he’d heard about Phil was bad - he’d been told that Phil was the friendliest of his group, that he was actually pretty nice, that he was really creative. Hypothetically, Dan could have just started a conversation with Phil. He could have sat next to him and made jokes and maybe asked him if wanted to hang out sometime. He _could_ have, but he never would. Starting conversations was too frightening, his anxiety was too much for that, and there was always a chance that Phil would end up being evil after all. Besides, Dan had friends. It wasn’t a big deal if he didn’t have one more.

And then, after months of conflicting emotions and unnecessary confusion, everything seemed to click one day in the spring, as Dan walked to his next class and Phil fell into step beside him. Maybe Dan was oblivious, he must have been, to have ignored what was so obvious in his own feelings for so long. But Phil walked right next to him, and he looked him in the eye and smiled at him, saying “Hey, Dan,” and Dan’s stomach seemed to drop right out of his body. He was possibly every cliche that had ever been written, but his heart stopped nevertheless and restarted at a pace that felt like it must have been ten times faster.

Phil just kept walking, and Dan stuttered out a reply back. He looked at Phil’s eyes, which were so pretty and so blue, and he tried to act as though Phil hadn’t just managed to change everything with two inconsequential words. Dan was so stupid, and he didn’t know how he had managed to exist in such deep denial for so long. And so he continued to try to form words to say to Phil, and he tried to act as though everything hadn’t just fallen into place as unreasonably and unexpectedly as he had fallen in love with Phil.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from soundcheck by catfish and the bottlemen, a band i'd highly recommend


End file.
